This was lovely. Make a custard with : juice of 1 1/2 limes, 1/2 Thai green chilli, 2 tbs cream, 2tbs milk, 1 tbs sugar, 1 egg yolk. Melt 1/3 of a 100g bar of white chocolate and mix this into the custard. Soak 1 leaf gelatine and dissolve that in the custard, let it cool a bit. Whip the egg white into peaks and stir it in carefully. Decant into glasses. The flavours are a good balance though we didn't detect the chilli. Its a little on the firm side (but still ok) but next time I might use less gelatine.

Soppy St. Valentines Day stuff, but its also Chinese New Year. I don't think in previous years we used to do anything special in the soppy line, but this year we felt we should make use of any excuse to drink fizz. The starter looked fab but the digital camera wasnt in the mood, so you just have to use you imagination.

The marinade is from Sybil Kapoors Taste and it is unfailingly delicious

Chocolate and coriander tart, lexia raisin and rum ice cream

..and attentive readers will have spotted that this is the second appearance of this, from David Everitt-Matthias Essence. This too is unfailingly delicious. We told John about the lime-chocolate-chilli mousse and he looked slightly dubious, so that's what he is getting next!

I must confess I was dreading Colin's reaction : "broccoli! tofu! How you do spoil me" but it was delicious. In any case Colin was late back from work. Not that I mind Colin being late, since the rule is that every 5 minutes Colin is late, I can pour myself another glass of the cooking sherry

This was going to be with beetroot and horseradish but I'd mentioned to Colin mackerel and pineapple in consecutive sentences and hed assumed I was doing mackerel with pineapple. Its not as crazy as it sounds and the more I thought about it the more feasible it seemed.

Saddle of hare in cream, green beans, gnocchi

Lanes very occasionally has hares; they say their rabbit man gets a few by mistake. Hares are for the Real Cook and not for the squeamish. I spent a good part of the afternoon dealing with this one. The saddle was for tonight, the legs casseroled for Simon on Wednesday, the giblets made into a sauce for pasta, and a pot of stock too. We almost always use the same recipes for the saddle and legs, from Joyce Molyneaux book.